About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

P is for Pirates - Part I; American Makes

And so to Pirates, not Hong Kong pirates, but "Ooh-Arrrh" Pirates, although some of them are made in HK! I should have held this post until International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which if memory serves is late summer some time, but as I'd though of a good April First skit a week or two ago which I now can't remember, and as the blogging will be taking a back-seat from 10th April till mid-late October (I've got a date for my residential training course), and as they were in the queue to be 'done', they are published today as a sort of 'thank-you' for my hitting 11,500+ views last month. I shall now be content with between nine-and-a-half and ten-and-a-half thousand per month and stop chasing 'hits', as last month's 46 posts was hard work!!

We look first at the production of makes based in America...and both posts will deal with the larger sizes only, I have the original issues of Strelets*R and Orion/Dark Dream but Dave has them covered well on PSR (along with more recent sets I think?) and the Starlux small scale have been covered (or will be soon - I know I've done the images!!?), which really only leaves the larger ones to get their moment in the limelight.

These are the Marx 50mm set, made in their HK factories from polystyrene and hard to get in this condition, there is a pose missing, but short of going and looking at Kent Sprecher's Toy Soldier HQ I can't tell you which one!...It is there!

Marx also did a set of 54mm Pirates and the top shot shows two painted - probably from the USA, three unpainted - probably from Swansea and two remoulds (bottom left shot) from Mexico or HK? They were also given the 'Warriors or the World' (WoW) treatment, with polystyrene and individual names.

The other six (bottom right shot) are the quite common set of re-issued Ideal Pirates, they originally went with a toy boat I believe, hence the lack of bases?

These are the big boys, with 60mm ring-hand figures from MPC, the shot includes a couple of the accessories they did for the hands, with - below them - a couple of the baseless or mini-based Pirates from Tim-Mee, I don't know if these are US production or if they were made in the factory they had in Europe, as far as I know only the GI's were produced over here but who knows with these things?

6 comments:

Paul´s Bods said...

Pirates are Grrrrreat, what other group of people accept everyone into thier ranks, put up with a lot of exteranl abuse and have a simple yet effective set of sensible rules?
46 posts! You should have gone in for the A-Z challenge thingy.
Have fun on your course..Seems as if, like the pirates, we are in the same boat, as it looks like I´ve been granted the pleasure of a re.hab course at some point in the future..when, I don´t know..here they never tell until about two days before it starts.
Cheers
Paul

Hugh Walter said...

Hi Paul...Except the A-Z Challenge thingy started a couple of years after I did an A-Z and back again! Which I have continued to pay lip-service to with the 'A is for...' thingy, and which the Challenge people have never thanked me for!! Bloody Plagiarists!!!!

Good luck with re-hab...I'll eMail you - I'm having trouble with a bit of German!

Hugh

JohnM said...

Hmmm, I thought some of those poses looked familiar.

It seems some of the Orion 1/72 pirates really are pirates.

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/SetScans/ORI72001a.jpg

Hugh Walter said...

Hi JM...Yup! There's only so many ways to skin a cat! And quite a few Marx moulds seem to have ended-up 'East'!!

Now; I thought you'd gone over to the website full-time yet I find nice Aussies on a blog?!! I'm linking to the website at the moment and can't edit until blogger get their act together but they're too busy trying to foist a third format on us before they've sorted out the other two!!

Soon as they give me editing rights back I'll link to both...nice Assies by the way, did I say that!

cheers
Hugh

JohnM said...

Cheers Hugh, thanks very much.

The Mz Blog / Website thing. I decided that the blog on blogger would be somewhere I would update on a fairly regular basis with a kind of "WIP" format, while the website would be more a showcase, if you can call it that, of finished stuff or articles, etc.

Life being what it is, and things getting in the way of my cunning plans, I neither update the blog on a regular basis nor have I turned the website into anything remotely like a showcase recently (lol).

Anyhow, always a pleasure to see new stuff here on your blog and to read your observations.

John

Hugh Walter said...

A-Ha! Got my edits back so will link to the blog in a day or two John - I need to have a session at it, there's a whole bunch bookmarked!

Hugh